


Never saw anything (I couldn't blame on my mind)

by thegalwhodidlikemusicals



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Ben Solo drives a motorcycle and no one can convince me otherwise, Eventual Fluff, Eventual Smut, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:28:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22157065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegalwhodidlikemusicals/pseuds/thegalwhodidlikemusicals
Summary: “Don’t you think that maybe you deserve this? To let the job take a backseat for a while and, you know…find him?”“If he really knew what was good for my soul, he would wait at least until I felt like I belonged here.”Academia AU, now with a force bond that’s a mental link between soulmates.Alternatively, Rey and Ben are really bad at needing each other.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Never saw anything (I couldn't blame on my mind)

The signs had been there, if only Rey had been just a bit more attuned to them. Maybe if she had been running on actual sleep instead of caffeine, she wouldn’t have been so mind-bogglingly clueless. Or maybe if they hadn’t changed the language Rey was required to teach in the second half of the intro computer science course from Python to Java, forcing her into a complete redesign of labs four through eight. That had been detaining any shreds of her excess mental energy for weeks now. Or maybe, just maybe, if she had fantasized a little more about bonds as a child, giving in to the indulgent romantic fantasy of being needed emotionally, intellectually, _physically_ by someone and learning to recognize it.

But Rey Warner was first and foremost a practical woman, trained to detect errors and inefficiencies. She didn’t like to speculate. So as she rolled her neck in a slow circle for what had to have been the fifth time in ten minutes, hunched over her desk in her too-cold office with a PNAS article that she would rather not be reading, she simply wrinkled her nose when her left palm began to tingle. Her first thought was that she was itchy, and she flexed her other hand to scratch at her palm.

The sensitivity radiated outward, encompassing her arm and then spreading across her chest. Rey leaned back in her swiveling desk chair, which squeaked in protest. Her back gave a shudder at being touched by the faux leather, and Rey frowned. _Did this have to do with her switch in birth control? Some kind of hormonal something?_

Her skin prickled where her shirt touched near her neck, and Rey decided that while the sensation was…disarming, it wasn’t wholly unpleasant. She should probably report it to a medical professional if it continued. But…

Rey’s eyes flicked to the clock. 3:42PM. Eighteen minutes until office hours. Her vanilla latte was growing cold on her desk next to her, and as she raised it to her lips to take a sip and ground herself in the sweet bitterness, she almost gasped at the taste—more intense, somehow, magnified by this feeling. This was _definitely_ a step away from normal.

She could imagine the kinds of suggestive comments that her friends would make if they were here. Finn, in particular, she could imagine waggling his eyebrows with suggestions about what to do with such _increased sensitivity_. She thanked the stars she had her own office now, not like the one she shared with four others in grad school, so she could have her weird spells in peace.

She should not be indulging in this, whatever it was. Bright pink and blue post-it notes on her computer screen had eight different things she should focus on—among them, grading, writing lessons, reviewing this article, coding up that graphic aid for her collaborator in neuroscience, and emails. God, the emails. But all of that felt far away, somehow, and Rey recalled a particularly effective yoga session a few years ago that left her blissed out and so in tune with her sense that she noticed the different pitches at which the air conditioning rattled, of all things. (Anyone who says yoga doesn’t have actual effects could fuck right off, in Rey’s mind. Not that she had practiced recently—there was no time.) This tingling sensation, which was transforming into something like calmness, hit her like that post-yoga mood.

_Take relaxation while you can get it, Warner._

Rey decided with a start that she was going to enjoy a nice thing while it lasted. She adjusted her seat until her back was snug against the seat, and she let her eyes drift back to the article printout. Her eyes slid over the same sentence a few times without absorbing its meaning. But she felt…more cozy. And maybe the words would make their way into her brain somehow. Like sleeping with a book by her pillow to absorb the content.

Not that she had ever tried that.

Well, not that she had ever tried that more than a couple times.

By the time the first undergraduate knocked on her door at 4:07, the sensation had dulled to a pleasant tingle, and Rey could focus on his nervous questions.

* * *

Rey had wanted to become a professor for the thrill of research and teaching, the flexible hours, and the elusive promise of eventual job security. And most days, if someone asked her, she could say that she loved it with a smile.

Nothing, though, could ever prepare her for how much she abhorred the all-faculty meetings. The department meetings of all the computer science professors were bad enough, where the topics were tedious but relevant—these meetings were endlessly bureaucratic and full of interdepartmental politics that she could barely wrap her head around.

Rey’s Wednesday afternoon mood could be improved, to say the least.

The meeting room was large enough for a couple hundred, but the folding chairs had been distributed so haphazardly that some people would almost certainly have to stanf. Rey tried to resist the urge to roll her eyes and also resist the urge to feel like a fifteen year-old, unable to find a seat in her high school cafeteria.

It wasn’t very effective.

“How’s it hanging, Rey?”

She turned gratefully to the familiar voice of Professor Dameron— _Poe,_ she reminded herself, _they were so casual with address here, for the most part_.

“All right. Do you know where they hid the caffeine this time?”

“The conference room with the oval windows, I think. The coffee was almost gone when I was there, though, and all that was left of the tea was the sleepytime blends.”

Rey let out a half laugh, half sigh. “Yeah, not exactly what I need right now. Thanks though.”

“Let’s find a seat before the shenanigans start.”

Rey followed him to a couple of chairs as a steady stream of faculty trickled in.

“How’s the busy part of the semester going?” He shot her a look.

“You know. Crazy.” She shrugged. “The teaching’s the best part of it, though. Kids care so much more here than where I studied.”

Poe snickered. “I know what you mean—I had a girl try to come on to me the other day, presumably about a lab grade…not that I ever would have been even tempted, obviously…anyway, once that happened, I realized how little I get bribed for shit like that here.”

Rey nodded once, then twice again, a little awkwardly. “And…how is Finn?”

She saw a bit of color rise to Poe’s cheeks. “I mean, with us, things are…good. I mean, great. The bond is…not how I expected, but it’s…we’re learning to manage it.”

Rey had met Poe and Finn separately at the beginning-of-the-year science mixer, connecting with Poe over a love of classic arcade games and with Finn over a shared taste in space operas. When she had learned that the two were new bondmates, it had made sense in that dumb, cosmic way people liked to talk about.

“It seems like there’s a lot of bonded pairs in the faculty,” Rey mused. The room was almost full with professors and staff by now, and she could identify three couples that she had heard through the rumor mill were bonded.

“Well,” Poe scratched his neck. “You know what they say about it coming out of being a good intellectual pairing. Same way there’s a high prevalence of bonds in artists. I personally think that’s kind of elitist crap, saying you need some sort of special skill to connect with your soulmate, but…”

“Yeah.” Rey nodded.

“I’m just glad I can support him through the bullshit of the last few years of his PhD, you know?”

Rey regarded Poe cautiously. He wasn’t usually one to talk about the difference in seniority between him and Finn unprompted. “Has it been worse?”

“As one of three black people in the entire graduate student population of the math department, it's never really been good for him,” Poe replied tightly. Then he sighed. “Sorry, didn’t mean for it to come out like that.”

“No, I get it.”

“Plus he’s been trying to switch advisors for months now, but Solo won’t make the process easy for him.”

Rey felt her mouth grow dry. “Is he—I mean, is he being a racist arse, does Finn need to report—“

“No, none of that. Thankfully, I guess. Solo is just a dick to everyone.”

 _That tracks_. Rey let her eyes wander amongst the crowd for Ben Solo, whom of course she hadn’t talked to since—

“Let’s get started,” came the clear voice of Dean Hux over the din. Hux was pretty young for a dean, with enough of a standoffish sneer that Rey knew she never would have gone to him for advice as an undergrad. Hux was also known for having an absolutely absurd sense of fashion—Rey remembered hearing about how his old position was at an extremely Catholic university or something, so he’d had a really restrictive dress code, and he was just now getting to let it out. Today he had on some sort of garish, absurdly orange cardigan that was bunched up around his arms, making them about three times as wide as usual.

“We will begin with the agenda, and then proceed to the rules of order, and then to roll call.”

“Always the riveting speech from Theophilius Hux,” Poe muttered to her, sliding her a crooked smile.

“It’s even worse than Theo, it’s Armitage,” she responded, something surprised flickering inside her.

“Is it really? Fuck, I didn’t know that. It’s just as pretentious as he is.”

Rey snorted and a few heads turned her way. She nodded a small apology and poked Poe in the side, who gave her a fake pleading look that she could only imagine he had been perfecting his entire life. She jerked her head towards Hux, who had just moved onto agenda item 1B, in a silent gesture of _let’s get through this like adults for_ once. Stunningly, Poe acquiesced.

As Rey pulled out her journal from her briefcase to take notes, she finally understood the lingering feeling of surprise.

_I didn’t think I knew his first name either._

* * *

Rey managed to survive the meeting, only doodling a couple designs for birthday cakes and a strangely proportioned spaceship before Hux dismissed them. But the warm air and the droning voices had almost led her to nod off a handful of times. So she parted from Poe, delaying his invitation to get a drink, and headed to her bus stop.

The October air was not too cool to be unpleasant, and she took a little pleasure at crunching the first fallen leaves beneath her feet.

_Careful. You’re an adult, now._

Reaching the stop, Rey surveyed the parking lot before her, trying to identify as many of her colleagues as possible. She was hopeless at IDing anyone outside of the School of Science, Technology, and Engineering, but she thought she saw a couple of older Physics people that she ran into at a water cooler once. Of course their names were long gone from her memory by now. They got together into a light green Prius with the license plate IONBEAM.

Of fucking course.

The sound of an engine revving to her left distracted her, and Rey turned her head to see a figure in a leather jacket adjust a black helmet with streaks of red running through it. He was straddling a black motorcycle with what were objectively powerful thighs. Rey had never ridden a motorcycle, but she had just started regular, old-fashioned biking with Rose _(“all comp sci academics do this or hike, I have no clue why, but these are the sports which are our lot, Rey”)_. And she could recognize any kind of sleek machine when she saw one. Getting on a motorcycle was definitely on her list.

Rey had never really understood the attraction to the person on the motorbike, which filtered through popular movies and books annoyingly frequently. But her eyes were drawn to the figure, who was taller than everyone around, with lots of dark hair that peeked out from below his helmet—

Something cold dropped in Rey’s stomach as she recognized Ben Solo. A part of her wanted to look away, like she hadn’t just been pondering the trope of the motorcycle bad boy with his thighs on her mind. But before she could bring herself to do it, he pulled out of his spot and rode in a circle, bringing his eyes to hers.

Most of his face was obscured by the visor, really, but she would have recognized him in a frickin' caveman costume. Ben was distinctive, and Rey felt…dissected in his gaze. Poe’s muttered declaration of _a dick to everyone_ rose to mind, and she had the sudden irrational fear that Ben could pull that memory from her just with his eye contact.

But the fear fell as quickly as it arose. Ben snapped his eyes back to the road. Rey looked down at her feet, just slightly short of breath, willing herself to blend against the background.

* * *

She was going to motivate herself to work, she swore, at 7:30. It was 7:26 now, so that meant four minutes of scrolling her phone aimlessly. Rey raised the last dumpling to her mouth, swearing as the chopsticks deposited the slippery bugger onto one of her manila folders of midterms. She had tried to keep her “home desk” clean at the beginning of the year, maybe out of hope it would keep her life organized. Somehow, like always, the clutter crowded in. Rey eschewed the chopsticks and brought the rogue dumpling to her mouth with her fingers.

Looking through Facebook was more of a habitual action at this point. Rey tried to open a New York Times article that one of her friends from undergrad had shared about Iran, only to have the cheery but firm “you need an account to access more free articles!” notice pop up.

_Maybe another day, or maybe just ask for Poe’s account info, he at least does the crosswords--_

And then she felt it.

Even Rey, who would wrinkle her nose at any suggestion of a romance or bonding novel, could not mistake this. She could feel something _warming_ her, and her shoulders tensed. It was immediately apparent that this warmth was not herself, and yet it felt like it originated from within her, which is of course not how heat works, and how could she even—

And then the warmth changed and solidified and textured, and suddenly she was aware of someone behind her. The back of her neck tingled like it had been brushed with the lightest fingertips, and something like electricity hummed through her body radiating from that spot.

Rey’s mind was racing. Some part of her brain was screaming _please, I’m not ready, it’s the wrong time_ , but the most urgent plan of action was to figure out how to respond. The warring impulses were to shut her eyes and curl up and _hide hide hide_ , and honestly that didn’t sound too bad right now. But some primal, maybe even primordial thought flickered in the back of her head, and Rey turned her head to look up behind her.

There was nobody physically there—Rey knew that. Bonds didn’t work like that for at least a few weeks. But the action to look at them opened something inside of her, and Rey didn’t know how the hell this could even be possible, but it was like her physical movement had triggered her to turn her _soul_ towards this person.

And— _oh._

It was as if she was bathed in pure sunlight, but sunlight that molded to her skin. She felt—she felt _seen_ , in a whole kind of way. In a way that soothed the memory of a couple of sneering undergraduates trying to mansplain a concept to her after her first class taught as a professor. In a way that none of her foster parents had been able to wrap their heads around, given her many stubborn periods of silence. This recognition, this accepting kind of touch would take all of her.

For a breath-stealing moment, they regarded each other and she could feel the emotions trickling off of this other person _(bondmate?)_ like rivulets of condensation on a cold glass during a summer’s day. Rey could sense the panic, probably similar to how she was giving it off, and surprise, and _fuck_ , she was hit with a sense of their longing to be _known this way_.

And then before she could even begin to conceptualize how to respond, a wave of something deep and dark was pulling over them, and Rey could taste it on her tongue and it felt like self-loathing and she opened her mouth to say something, anything, but the presence was gone. Rey had always thought that “getting the wind knocked out of someone” was an overdramatic phrase, but as her needy lungs sucked in a breath of the already too cold air, she admitted more credence to the expression than she had thought.

There was _no way_ this was anything other than the opening of a bond.

And oh, she was _fucked_.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi friends! Throwing my hat in the Reylo Feels Ring. Not that this fandom needs another academia AU (there are already soooo many amazing ones), but this one wouldn't shut up inside my brain. Lots of worldbuilding to do, lots of past relationships to explore...can't wait! Hope you'll stay with me! Leave a comment, if you feel so inclined. :)


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